Specially designed instruction (and/or related services) are required for the student to progress in the general education curriculum

So step one doesn’t seem to be too difficult. Standardized tests, criterion-referenced assessments and other formal and informal measures are available to SLPs for this purpose. Didn’t we all spend most of our graduate school class time studying the various communication processes and what constitutes them being ‘disordered’?

Step 2 – that’s another story we’ll come back to in a minute…

And step 3…well let’s just say that most SLPs want to help everyone. It’s kind of in our nature! But we cannot do it all. And we have to think about all of the expertise in a school building and what EACH are specially trained to do. If the student can’t get their needs met by other individuals on the team, perhaps they require your specialized instruction. But, let’s be honest, sometimes someone else can do it.

So back to step 2…what is adverse educational impact anyway?

Well, of course, it’s determined on an individual basis so there’s no formula for it. But it definitely includes academic and social-emotional performance.

The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) provided some clarification to ASHA in 2007 confirming that educational performance does not just refer to academics.

We’ve touched on the communication skills evident in the Common Core State Standards (see that post here). The skills addressed by an SLP are clearly required for so many of these skills – easy way to justify that educational impact? We’d say so.

And it’s fair to say that educational impact for language skills is WAY easier than articulation, voice or fluency skills…but not an impossible task at all. Sometimes getting the documentation from the teachers is the hardest part.

We know that even a single-sound articulation error MAY impact a person’s self-confidence and social-emotional well-being. It’s that word ‘MAY’ that we have to be extra careful using.

Unless you are one of those SLPs with a crystal ball,

shouldn’t we consider if there is an impact AT THE TIME OF eligibility?

Is decreased intelligibility an educational impact? Sure…how do you determine progress in the curriculum if you can’t understand the individual?

Refusal to read aloud or participate in classroom discussion? Of course, if we can pinpoint that this is related to the communication disorder.

Does the student spell like they speak? Probably some good evidence that the student isn’t even discriminating.

What about teasing? It absolutely happens…but we’d venture to say that not every student is teased and those that do experience it are not always bothered by it. Shouldn’t part of the evaluation process include how the students themselves feel about their own speech?

There can be this mindset that the educational model neglects students with communication disorders unless they are failing academically. But there is so much more to success in school than just academics.